align herself with a contingent of contemporary musicians from the R&B and hip hop scene, who would add to Franklin's soulful foundation without radically detracting it and try to re-connect her with a new audience that was embracing neo soul and hip hop soul artists such as Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu and The Fugees. Davis would become instrumental in consulting producers and songwriters to work with Franklin, including both established and upcoming musicians such as Lauryn Hill, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri, and Daryl Simmons. Critical reception A Rose Is Still a Rose received generally favorable reviews from music critics who complimented Franklin on her decision to adapt a younger sound following the adult contemporary material on her previous albums. Time magazine called the album "one of the five best albums of the year", declaring it "Franklin's most rewarding album in more than two decades." The Village Voice journalist Robert Christgau gave A Rose Is Still a Rose an A rating and noted that "none of these 11 songs aspires to the declarative tunes and pungent phrases of the soul era, and at 55 Aretha is losing her high end. But after a decade in artistic seclusion, she had something to prove, and she did – with an album as audacious and accomplished as such great Wexlers as Spirit in the Dark or Young, Gifted and Black." Giving the album four stars out of four, USA Today critic Steve Jones wrote, “with the first note of A Rose Is Still a Rose, Franklin serves notice that her 30-year reign as Queen of Soul isn't about to end. After all this time, this rose remains in full bloom." AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine found that "the most notable element of the album is that Franklin collaborates with fresh talent, all of whom are either prominent rap figures or at least fluent in hip-hop [...] which is the last thing most observers would have expected from Franklin in 1997." While he was critical of Sean "Puffy" Combs's material, he felt that her other collaborations worked "because they find Franklin sounding vital, which is something that has not happened throughout the '90s." In his review for Rolling Stone, James Hunter wrote that "with the limited exception of Walden's songs, A Rose Is Still a Rose leaves behind Franklin's overly dogmatic eighties work. It's subtle and sexy, a miraculous